Re: Plagiarism

[Margaret McGraw <mmcgraw@TENET.EDU>]

In Sept a history teacher had his students write an essay on a famous
Hispanic for Hispanic Heritage Month.  A student printed out an article on
a person from Groiller cd encyclopedia on our laser printer.  (I do charge
them .05 a page to print encyclopedia articles. Copier is .10 a page) She
came into the library the morning the paper was due because she said she
needed more information.  Her "essay" was not long enough.  I asked to see
her "essay" and discovered it was the article from the encyclopedia.  I
told her she could not turn that in, and she said, "you mean I have to
copy it over?"  It still said Grolliers across the top.  I warned the
teacher that she would try to turn this in.  He accepted it as her essay
and gave her a 75!!.  I asked him if he would have accepted a photocopy of
a page from a paper encyclopedia. He just looked at me. Even if this child
had copied the article word for word, she would have at least read it.  As
it was she got credit for finding a title and counting up the amount of
words she needed.  Laser printers make things look so nice it looked like
a typed paper. I now use green or blue paper for the laser printer when
kids are printing out encyclopedia articles.  Maybe this will help.  I am
thinking of getting a stamp that says encyclopedia in large letters to
stamp the bottom of the paper.

Maggie McGraw                          William Slider Middle School
mmcgraw@tenet.edu                      11700 School Lane
                                       El Paso, TX 79936
                                       (915) 857-4450